Journey Around Work in the Next 10 Years
I am not a journalist, not a statesman, not an economist. I am, more simply, a person who has experienced work in many forms. I have lived through jobs and environments that are vastly different from each other, filled with equally diverse people. I have worked with my hands, with my mind, with responsibility. I have breathed in the smell of workshops and that of offices, I have seen up close worlds that do not communicate, that often do not understand each other, with roles in recent years that instead should have connected all areas. Precisely for this reason, every experience has brought me feelings, lessons, and values that have taught me to look at work with a broader vision.
This variety and breadth of experience have allowed me to notice details that often escape those who have traveled only a single path. I have learned to recognize the small signals that indicate change, to look for cracks and see opportunities within them, and to understand how people truly move when they work. I have built trajectories that have connected both professional and non-professional figures, from the artisan’s employee to the executive who influences an entire supply chain. It is in this intertwining that my cross-cutting vision of work was formed.
Yes, it’s true, the blog is Italian, I am too, and I mainly work in Italy. And Italy, for me, is a wonderful country, full of talent and creativity, yet it often laments the crisis while refusing jobs that need to be done. It’s a country where the story of work is always caught between nostalgia and complaint, between pride and resignation. I love Italy and Italians deeply, but I admit there is room for improvement. In recent years, especially after the pandemic, I have seen work and the people who inhabit it change. Artisans, small businesses, professionals—all, in one way or another, have regenerated themselves. They had to, wanted to, or were forced to, breaking previous patterns and allowing new trends to emerge, perhaps healthier and maybe fairer than before. Work today is no longer—or not only—a place for self-fulfillment. For many, it has returned to being what it perhaps always should have been: a means to live, not the other way around.
There used to be a saying: “I’m not quick at working, because if I finish early they give me more to do.” It was an almost iconic expression of an era when work was governed by different parameters. Today, that pace has disappeared in many fields. AI introduces nonlinear productivity that does not follow human timing. And so, what is now at risk is no longer the amount of work, but the skill offered by the worker.
Technical skills become automated, procedural skills are absorbed by tools, mnemonic skills are no longer needed, at least apparently, and basic skills become a commodity. The risk today is not so much “losing your job” but losing what makes that job yours, the distinctive advantage and the very reason you hold a seat in an organization. The scenario is changing and changing fast. Like everything that changes quickly, it risks changing according to a metric marked by few or poorly organized rules of inclusion. If before it took three people to perform a certain type of activity, tomorrow it may take only one: the one who knows how to use artificial intelligence best, who can interact with tools, orchestrate processes, and transform a task into a system. Not the most traditionally experienced, but the one most capable of integrating and “squeezing” technology into their work. This is not science fiction. It is already reality. And those who don’t realize it risk staying still while the world moves.
The key element has always been competence
Let’s think about what has been invented and reflect on what is still missing. Let’s reason from the perspective of everyday life as average-income people with a house, a car, one or two cell phones, a PC, internet, hot water, heating, a refrigerator, TV, air fryer, microwave, oven, stove, bed, blankets, furniture, radio, running water, a smart watch, and a million functional and working gadgets scattered throughout our lives. Everything is changing and will continue to change dramatically. The way services are delivered will change, and the way people demand them will change. Work and the mindset with which people approach work are radically shifting. In a context where the newborn AI is becoming the engine of efficiency and is powering these changes, how does this reasoning affect skills? AI, in its current form, knows everything, of course, it is not yet reliable for clinical diagnoses, “but it will be.” It will be our Jarvis that engineers use for structural calculations; architects for virtual models; furniture makers for producing quotes, etc. And let’s not think only of AI in the form of classic chatbots. The big players are providing access to APIs that will make software and applications capable of responding to specific needs with the versatility of AI. And skills? We live in an era where the question is no longer “what can artificial intelligence do?” because if it’s not clear, artificial intelligence can do almost everything. The question should be “what is left for us to do?” This is a question professionals, creatives, entrepreneurs, students, parents are asking themselves, and, mind you, major industries are already silently finding answers. A question that doesn’t arise from fear but from the awareness that we are entering new territory where the rules of the game are no longer those of the last century.
AI can generate texts, images, code, strategies, analyses. It can do so faster, more accurately, more tirelessly. But there is one area it cannot enter: meaning. And in the next ten years, what will make us unique will not be what we can do better than machines, but what we can do that machines cannot do at all.
The most human skill of all lies in the value of meaning.
Machines produce content, humans produce meaning. This difference, seemingly subtle, is actually everything. A language model can generate a perfect text, but it cannot decide why that text should exist, for whom, at what moment, with what emotional or ethical impact. It cannot grasp the unspoken, read cultural nuances, interpret a complex human context, or understand emotions. In the next ten years, the ability to give meaning will become one of the rarest and most sought-after skills. It will not be enough to produce: one must know how to interpret, choose, and guide. And for a simple reason: yesterday, the difference was in the answer to a question; today and tomorrow, the difference will be in how to ask better questions to get the best response from AI. And this concept is at the core of using AI. “The best answer comes to those who ask the best question.” Machines can generate infinite variations of content, but they cannot decide how a system should work that other humans will use to create value.
Creating value is the key factor.
Why? Because the concept of value for a human being is given by a mixture of parameters. It is a gut feeling, that is, emotion and sensation. What represents value for me may not be the same for you who are reading, but it will be valuable for a million people like me, or like you, and that is enough to build an economic structure around it. The skill will be knowing how to extract the best usable concept from the machine.
Rewrite the skill as a “superpower”
AI can imitate styles, but it cannot imagine. This does not mean we should rest on this assumption. The fact that it cannot generate a radically new intuition does not mean it does not create. It already does and will continue to do so by using millions of models combined in trillions or eons of valid combinations. And the models increase exponentially, especially when generated by AI and validated by humans. So, and this is where I insist, greatness will be the ability to interpret what people want, what is needed, and how to achieve it. AI’s work is valid and technically perfect for sure, but it has no value if there is no coding between humans and machines. Coding is the task of human competence. Competence, which today originates from the ability to use knowledge, attitude, experience, and intelligence to forge skill and autonomy in responsibly performing a job, will have to be rewritten and reshaped around new tools. From competence, as defined above, the knowledge “offered by AI” must be subtracted, thus no longer exclusively the result of academic qualifications. Experience will largely be provided by a model that offers millions of combinations of others’ experience. These two characteristics, combined, are already a power, indeed an immense “Superpower.” And beware, it is already like this today; in three years AI has grown enormously, the world outside runs and overwhelms, it does not wait. Finally, in the equation only “attitude and intelligence” remain. And if we think that intelligence is already a form of universal seasoning — what prevented sapiens from ending up at the bottom of the food chain as food for nature — what remains is “attitude.” The latter represents a characteristic too little valued to be so impactful as to forge new roles and new professionals ready to survive in a world of work where the way of working is completely overturned.
Return to the arts
In a very brief summary, an increase in the opportunities offered by AI could correspond to a forced decrease in workers’ skills. Probably not soon, but not too far from today either, this change will reopen reflections on “what will the new generations do?” There will be less and less need for people to pack frozen foods. But there will always be a need for people who repair a pipe, a terminal, or a hole in a brick. Perhaps a return to manual skills will lead to a change. Maybe this change will coincide with a revival of the arts, given for example by the mastery of a craftsman who creates beautiful and comfortable shoes, the carpenter who makes a unique piece of furniture, the tailor who crafts a garment as if it were an extension of the person who will wear it. Aesthetics, beauty, emotion are qualities that enchant both those who know how to perceive them and those who know how to give them. They live in a smooth surface polished by hand, in an extraordinary color obtained with patience, in a unique object that carries with it the same emotions as those who created it. Artificial intelligence will never be able to understand the feeling that a work of art conveys. It will never be able to smell the warm, resinous scent of a piece of furniture just made by a carpenter’s hands. It will never experience the whirlwind of emotions born from the smell of handmade bread baked in a wood-fired oven, when the crust cracks and releases a steam that smells of home, history, tradition. Perhaps, in a world of digital perfection, of detailed content that will fill every void in our existence, the human being will return to being what they have always been: an inexhaustible source of beauty creation with the same strength, intelligence, and passion that gave the world the Renaissance, Neoclassicism, Bernini, Caravaggio, and countless other known and unknown names. Perhaps the art of thinking, imagining, theorizing will return to be the greatest expression of our humanity.
Thank you for your time
L.C.
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